Sexual problems are common, and the likelihood of experiencing them increases with age and various chronic diseases. Therefore, healthcare professionals should be able to bring up sexual issues with their patients. The present thesis aimed to evaluate the barriers experienced by Finnish general practitioners (GPs) and final-year medical students and midwifery students to bringing up sexual issues with their patients. Further, it set out to determine GPs’ self-reported inquiries about sexual problems when dealing with patients with chronic diseases as well as GPs’ awareness of medications inducing sexual problems. Additionally, it assesses the knowledge of and educational interest in sexual medicine of medical and midwifery students.

The study of GPs collected data from a random sample of 1,000 Finnish GPs. For the study of students, all final-year medical and midwifery students graduating between December 2018 and May 2019 in Finland were enrolled. Web-based questionnaires were utilized.

Although the GPs and both the medical and midwifery students reported a good competence in discussing sexual issues with patients, several barriers emerged that hindered them from bringing up such issues in patient encounters. In addition, the majority of the GPs considered that sexual problems are often side effects of medications prescribed for other pathologies. Nevertheless, the GPs self-reported that they seldom followed up on whether the medications, once prescribed, caused side effects in sexual functions. The majority of the GPs reported that the sexual medicine education they had received in medical school was insufficient. The midwifery and, in particular, the medical students reported a lack of knowledge in several fields of sexual medicine. Additionally, the majority of medical students and approximately half the midwifery students reported receiving too little sexual medicine education during their studies.

The results of the present thesis highlight the importance of increasing sexual medicine education in both medical and midwifery education.